Professional athletes tend to avoid the political fray, but Major League Soccer player and Louisiana native Jason Garey has entered it because of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Associated PressColumbus Crew soccer player Jason Garey is hoping to bring attention to the oil spill disaster.

Garey, who holds Louisiana high school records for goals in a season (73) and a career (170), has picked up the pen in defense of the endangered terrain he spent so much time in during his youth.

A forward for the Columbus Crew who grew up in Gonzales and spent "pretty much every family vacation" in Grand Isle, Garey has volunteered as a spokesperson for Vanishing Paradise, a partnership between the National Wildlife Federation and Ducks Unlimited that hopes to raise national visibility for the endangerment of the Louisiana wetlands.

Garey's Gonzales home was his New Orleans-based family's refuge during Hurricane Katrina. His mother worked for Shell Oil, so discussions of energy policy are neither foreign nor uncomfortable territory for Garey. But the post-spill politicking has been distasteful.

"It's been so frustrating to watch the political part of this from the perspective of southern Louisiana, " Garey said. Recalling an interview he did with a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch shortly after the spill, he remembered, "I just kind of went off. I was so frustrated with the response . . . not only from BP, but also the federal response -- all the feet-dragging and inability to get anything done. This is a part of the country that doesn't get much attention unless something goes wrong."

After the spill, Garey realized that he had a responsibility to use his platform as a professional athlete to raise national consciousness about the dangers facing the fragile marshlands. "Politicians don't see us as a priority, and they won't until the oil is gone and the seafood drops off, " he said. "The wetlands problems are not new problems."

Because of the rigors of a professional soccer schedule, Garey hasn't been able to return to southern Louisiana since the oil spill, but finds himself watching for breaking information, frequently discussing the issue with teammates, and staying in close contact with his family.

"My family has been and will be personally affected, like so many others, " said Garey, whose uncle, Mike Garey, is a charter-boat captain for Reel Happy Fishing Charters. "There are pictures of me on family boats when I was 3 months old. I was fishing, shrimping and crabbing when I was just a little guy. Any free time I had I would spend in the marsh. It's how I grew up."

The spill's effect on Louisiana's fishing communities, summer tourism and fisheries continue to dominate national headlines, but Garey has been using the visibility of the endangered territory to champion what he argues is an equally important cause: the regeneration of eroded marshlands, attainable by diverting sediment rich in silt from the Mississippi River into Louisiana's increasingly salty marshlands.

According to Garey, "Some of the diversions my uncle has seen at work have really started to rebuild the land and mitigate the losses. Large-scale diversions can divert this course of destruction."

Garey said the effects of erosion are plainly visible from a boat.

"Whole islands in Barataria Bay are just gone, " he said. "The physical changes are very easy to see."

They are visible from land as well. Driving a car through a narrow band of land in Grand Isle is a lesson in the effects of erosion. Several driveways leading to houses not more than 50 feet from the road are at least partially submerged, and abandoned shacks occasionally slip off their precarious perches of land and into the Gulf.

Garey is trying to make it clear that this part of the nation has been facing enormous environmental challenges that predate the oil spill by decades.

"Grand Isle is still my favorite destination, " he said, "although I don't know what's going to happen now with all this oil."